The Aphex Face | Hacker News Reader

The Aphex Face

bastwood.com

43 pointshelwr11 comments

I was the first person to discover this. The chaosmachine mentioned in the article is me :)

I even got an interview request from Wired, but didn't call them in time.

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2002/05/52426

I found this in early 2000 and wrote about it for a Leeds based fanzine. There are two pictures on that single as far as I remember, I forget what the other one is of.

Here's both pictures, from my original website:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010828165019/http://chaos.yerbo...

I found the face a few months after buying the cd in 1999, but only thought to put it online after a friend gave me some webspace in 2001.

I shared the page with some friends on IRC, but it largely went unnoticed until 2002, when someone linked it somewhere (a newsgroup, maybe?), and it went viral.

I'm quoted in the article too.

Cheers!

It is always to nice to find a fellow geek who likes Aphex Twin.

There was recently a bunch of discussion on basically this topic on an episode of "Whad'ya know." The authors of "Music: Broken Symmetry, Geometry, and Complexity" were on and talked about the sounds that pictures make using pictures like ferns and Sierpinski's triangle.

Paper: http://www.uwec.edu/walkerjs/MBSGC/ Fern: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VujkenxzilQ

Valve encoded several images in sound files for their recent alternate reality game. They used a method called slow-scan television - quite different from what Aphex Twin did, but still very interesting:

http://kotaku.com/5484157/valves-portal-puzzle-so-far-the-fi...

Aphex actually released an SSTV track in 2001!

http://www.discogs.com/AFX-2-Remixes-By-AFX/release/19175

Track 3 contains an SSTV image with text detailing the programs used for the release and a picture of Richard D. James. Sometimes referred to as "Bonus High Frequencies".

This is quite old, but still fascinating.

Aphex Twin and Plaid are great bands and even took the time to include easter eggs in their songs.

A common mistake I see on the interwebs is that Aphex Twin is a band; it's one guy and that guy is Richard D. James.

Exact correctness aside, I call solo artists "bands" just to keep things simple.

In Aphex Twin's case, he makes it pretty clear that he's just one feller, so I didn't realize it was a common misconception. There are plenty of other similar Warp artists too, like Squarepusher.

I also call certain folders full of MP3 files "albums." Heh.

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